Monks to restore Hearst relic

Craig Marine, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Friday, July 14, 1995

A small Butte County religious community has acquired the remains of a 12th century Spanish monastery that newspaper czar William Randolph Hearst shipped from Europe in 1930 and which has lain in a tumble of rubble in Golden Gate Park for more than half a century.

The religious group, Cistercian monks who run a 600-acre prune and walnut ranch north of Chico, plan to reassemble part of the medieval structure if they can figure out which stones go where.

The director of the de Young Museum, which received the stones after Hearst decided he couldn't rebuild the monastery at the family's Northern California estate, said Thursday that after failing for half a century to erect the structure it was time to unload a pile of old limestone that had become a "white elephant."

It is the latest, and maybe last, chapter in the strange history of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Oliva, which evolved from a place of worship to a pile of stones that may now, finally, revert to some part of its original sum.

The story began in 1185 on a hilltop above the Tagus River in Spain, 80 miles northeast of Madrid, when members of the Cistercian order, a reformist offshoot of the Benedictine order, began building a monastery. The structure was largely completed by the end of the 13th century.

In September 1930, Arthur Byne, an authority on Spanish architecture, happened upon the abandoned monastery, which was being used as a barn. He reported back to his boss, Hearst, who was in one of his legendary acquisitive moods.

Hearst decided to buy the sprawling structure, ship it to Siskiyou County and erect it at the family estate at Wyntoon on the McCloud River.

It took eight months to take the monastery apart. Each stone was numbered, cataloged and recorded on a master floor plan. The huge limestone blocks were carried down a hillside by mule, ferried across the Tagus and hauled to Madrid by ox cart and narrow-gauge railway.

11 ships to carry stones&lt;

There, the stones were loaded into crates and sent to the port city of Valencia. Eleven ships carried the stones to the United States. The project cost Hearst about $1 million.

But once he had his big pile of rocks, Hearst found out that he wouldn't be able to find enough skilled masons to turn them back into a monastery at Wyntoon.

So in 1941 he donated the stones to the museum in Golden Gate Park, where they sat and sat and sat - first in a warehouse, then behind the Japanese Tea Garden.

Excited newspaper accounts told of the majesty of the structure that was soon to rise in the park. But World War II intervened, delaying construction.

Then a series of fires damaged many of the stones and burned off most of the reference numbers written upon them, transforming them into the world's most complex and expensive jigsaw puzzle.

Some of the stones were used in the Braille garden at the Strybing Arboretum, around Stow Lake and even in the de Young's private parking lot.

Big chunk of change&lt;

Occasionally during the past several decades, studies looked into how much it would cost to rebuild the monastery or part of it. The studies agreed on one detail: The project would be costly.

Finally, Museum Director Harry Parker decided to either

"fish or cut bait."

"We've had 75 years to put the monastery back together and we couldn't get it done," Parker conceded Thursday.

The museum offered the stones to various local nonprofit agencies, including the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco and The City's Recreation and Park Department. No one had the dough to rebuild the only part of the monastery that experts were confident could be reconstructed to accurate historical detail - the complex's chapter house.

"The most important thing from a historical and artistic perspective is they get the chapter house rebuilt," Parker said.

Parker had been approached by the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, a small agricultural community outside of Chico.

The brothers were interested in rebuilding the chapter house - used traditionally as a gathering spot for members of an abbey - and the museum trustees, following a transfer resolution in the city administrative code, decided to let them have the rocks.

From New Clairvaux, Brother Paul talked about the semi trucks that had brought at least 10 loads of stones to the quiet property where the members grow prunes and walnuts.

Public access debated&lt;

The brothers are using donations to pay for transporting and rebuilding the chapter house. Brother Paul said the group was excited about the possibility of having a chunk of their history on the land, but a bit concerned about their agreement to allow the public to view the chapter house three days a week.

"We're not all totally in agreement about that prospect," Brother Paul admitted, "but it's pretty tough to get 30 guys to agree to anything."

Under the agreement with the museum, the brothers have 10 years to build the chapter house, or else the museum can come and get their rocks back. But Thursday, it didn't sound as though Parker was too eager to get the stones back.

"Talk about a white elephant," he said. "I hope they can get it done." &lt;